Philip Levine, 14th Annual ODU Literary Festival

Philip Levine

Document Type

Featured Participant

Festival Date

10-10-1991

Location

Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building

Author/Artist Bio

Philip Levine's fourteenth book of poetry, What Work Is, was published this spring. Perhaps the title of this most recent collection summarizes much of what is central to his remarkable poetry. Most of his work concentrates on the working class, particularly those auto workers in Detroit with whom he is so familiar. His poetry has been a search to find a voice for the voiceless. As he explained in Detroit Magazine, "In terms of the literature of the United States they weren't being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. And as young people will, you know, I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that's what my life would be. And sure enough I've gone and done it. Or I've tried anyway...I just hope I have the strength to carry it all the way through."

Levine has won an assortment of awards, from a Notable Book Award given by the Library Association to the National Book Critics Award. He has read poetry at the Library of Congress, been an adviser to the Academy of American Poets, and has been named an outstanding lecturer by California State University.

According to the New York Times, Levine has become "the elegist of lost souls beaten down by forces they could not understand or control." Joyce Carol Oates said in American Poetry Review, "He is one of those poets whose work is so emotionally intense, and yet so controlled, so concentrated, that the accumulative effect of reading a number of his related poems can be shattering."

Description

Levine, an award-wining poet, read from his work with another award-winning poet, Henry Taylor on Thursday, October 10th, 1991 at 8:00 p.m. in the Mills Godwin, Jr. Life Sciences Building.

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